Starting a Landscaping Business

[08mxkfx]

Well since my current job is giving me alot of hours im thinking about starting my own landscape business. Im looking for some tips to getting started since im sure theres a few people that have there own. I want to do it legally by making it a legit business and getting insurance and all. Any ideas how i would go about making it a business and getting insurance? I already have a few weed wackers and a back pack leaf blower but im probably going to pick up a decent used zero turn mower. My friend is going to work for me for like $10 an hour. What do you guys think?

[ZeroLogic]

I'm a self employed contractor and there's a lot more to it than what meets the eye. Paper work through the roof, estimates everywhere. Insurance for me is 635 bucks. Plus tools, gas, workers, materials. Tax time hurts, accountants are expensive. It adds up. Your best bet is to find a Landscaper and stick with him for a while to learn how it works. Mistakes = money loss. You don't want to make big mistakes. But if you do go off on your own, make a name for yourself. Word of mouth is a contractors best friend or worst enemy.

[honduh440]

get in to fertilizer and weed control too its easy money and your already on the property

[08mxkfx]

I work with a guy doing landscaping now but im not making much and i think i could do good on my own. I dont plan on having more then 40 accounts so it shouldnt be too crazy cause me and my friend can easily do 10 lawans a day but if i spread 40 out over 5 or six days that wont be bad. and you figure $40 average each lawn that would be about $6000 a month and i dont plan on reporting half what i make so taxes shouldnt be too bad. Estimates are easy cause mostly all house around hear are developments so there mostly all around the same. The only thing i would have to buy would be a zero turn mower and a backup weed wacker and a nice open trailer. I would do fertilizing but you have to get certified to do that. Any ideas on a good name?

[400exrider707]

Originally posted by 08mxkfx
I work with a guy doing landscaping now but im not making much and i think i could do good on my own. I dont plan on having more then 40 accounts so it shouldnt be too crazy cause me and my friend can easily do 10 lawans a day but if i spread 40 out over 5 or six days that wont be bad. and you figure $40 average each lawn that would be about $6000 a month and i dont plan on reporting half what i make so taxes shouldnt be too bad. Estimates are easy cause mostly all house around hear are developments so there mostly all around the same. The only thing i would have to buy would be a zero turn mower and a backup weed wacker and a nice open trailer. I would do fertilizing but you have to get certified to do that. Any ideas on a good name?


First post says you want to be a legitimate legal business, now you're saying you wont report half of it?

[Aceman]

Originally posted by 400exrider707
First post says you want to be a legitimate legal business, now you're saying you wont report half of it?

Clearly he's confused.:rolleyes:

[quad2xtreme]

Originally posted by 400exrider707
First post says you want to be a legitimate legal business, now you're saying you wont report half of it?

that probably is about the average for self-employed workers. ;)

now is a rough time to start but if you have the accounts then go for it. In my community, I see people cutting their own now. I rarely ever see a lawn service in the neighborhood except for weed control. Be glad you aren't in NC. It is $50 a cut but you would be cutting about 1.5 acres.

[400exrider707]

Originally posted by quad2xtreme
that probably is about the average for self-employed workers. ;)

now is a rough time to start but if you have the accounts then go for it. In my community, I see people cutting their own now. I rarely ever see a lawn service in the neighborhood except for weed control. Be glad you aren't in NC. It is $50 a cut but you would be cutting about 1.5 acres.

Yea I know. I worked for a self employed "land scaper" for a few years. We did high end houses. Just did garden maintenance and created new garden beds. They brought in $120 an hour...

[08mxkfx]

Im not confused thats way almost every self employed person does it. Around here there building alot of houses still that are all half a million dollar houses and up. And alot of the people are coming up from the city so they would rather pay someone to maintain there yard. I could probably get an easy 20 accounts. Ive been trying to think of a name you guys have any ideas?
So far i have-
Cutting Edge
Yardsmart
Lawnworks
Ground Control
Turfmasters

[hypersnyper6947]

You should see about maintaining the foreclosed or bank owned properties in the area, they need to keep the property looking good so it will sell. Also im in the middle of starting my company right now (not lawn related) and start up funds are really really hard to find right now. A bank literally told me today that if we would have came one year ago she could of handed us 20k within an hour, now we cant get squat unless you have 2 years of operation with between 250k to 2.5m in sales. So start thinking hard about how to get some capital. Best of luck to you

[08mxkfx]

yeah i dont really need much to get going but im going to talk with my bank tomorrow. I got $1000 already so figure i should need another 5-6000 to get i nice zero turn spare weedwacker and leaf blower and a set of hedge trimmers and a cheap open trailer to start. Ive been searching craigslist and ive found a bunch of trailer for cheap but not too many zero turns. Im looking to get either a bobcat, scag, or exmark which i should beable to find a decent shape one for 4-5000.

[hypersnyper6947]

Hopefully your lenders are not as tight pocketed as ours were, we are only looking for 7-10k which is not much, but they still need some sort of collateral but since neither of us own our own home we dont have much to put up. So we are going to try to get a couple company credit cards along with some personal ones. Hopefully we can get it done with that. Where there is a will there's a way and we will make it happen. So will you good luck.


So if there are any venture capitalist out there interested shoot me a pm :D

[PolarisRider06]

i did landscaping with a guy in town here for 3 summers but we did all new garden construction/expansion the only thing we did with lawns was re-seeding anything we had to tear up. we did 95% of everything by hand and did a damn good job at it. and honestly the guy i worked for didnt have much invested into his actual bussiness, we had an old 3/4 ton ford pickup and a s-10 we used for hauling everything from tools and plants/materials to dirt, rock and mulch if we needed a lot of dirt, rock or mulch we had a local guy haul it with his dumptruck because we got all of the black dirt from him anyways.

me and the one other guy who worked for him both got paid really good. when i started i had 1 day that i got paid $8/hr just to see if i could handle it and for most of the rest of the summer i was paid $10/hr then at the end of the summer i was bumped up to $15/hr and thats what i got for the begining of the next summer then i got bumped up to $20/hr and the last job i worked with him i was paid $25/hr. the other guy was $5 above me the whole time because he had been doing it longer and in the end started doing some of the paperwork and estimates. and the owner charged $50/hr for himself so it definately wasnt cheap to have us do projects especially for how small the town is but we kept getting projects off and on all summer every year.

word of mouth is definately a big thing, thats what kept us busy. when we would start a project we would work from 5am til whatever time in the afternoon we decided to quit, our days were almost always at least 10 hours long and i had quite a few 15 hour days, we always got paid through lunch anywhere from 30-45 minutes and we got to take breaks whenever we needed one. also if we finished a project sooner than expected we got a bonus for that particular project and i had a few times where the property owners actually gave me an extra 100 bucks when we finished because of the job quality. so we were treated pretty well but we definately worked hard enough to be respected.

if you can get into doing a little more than just lawnmowing, even just something as simple as mulching/rocking gardens or planting shrubs it would open up a lot of opportunities for you, especially considering you'll have a truck and trailer anyways, then you could pay your friend a few bucks more and hour on the side projects and charge more yourself if you do a good job.

sorry for the long post i just figured i'd fill you in on what my experience has been with landscaping